From Likes to Leads: Converting Social Media Engagements into Sales
Pattie was only 18 when she had her son Justin. It was hard for her to raise a child as a single mother. Justin was a very talented young boy. Even though Pattie often struggled to meet the ends, she still supported her son’s talent. At the age of 12, he participated in a singing competition and won 2nd place. Pattie uploaded his performance video on YouTube. Later she continued to post Justin’s various cover songs on the platform. Scooter Braun, who was searching for a different singer discovered these videos and was impressed by Justin’s talent. At the age of 13, Justin signed to Braun’s label. That little kid became one of the biggest pop stars in the world, Justin Bieber. Yes, that is the power of Social Media. It can take you from rags to riches.
The whole world is immersed in social networking sites. People are looking for products and services even while doing mindless scrolling. So, if your products in the form of creative posts can catch their eyes and grab their attention, that small interaction with a post might give you a new lead, a potential customer. And, this is the moment you need to consider SMM (Social Media Marketing) to upgrade your game. SMM is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies to promote products and services. From creating new leads to building a loyal customer network, social media will become the pillar of building your brand.
Table of Contents
The Rise of Social Media
Before getting into how to grow with social media, let’s have a look at the growth of social media. All these digital platforms are younger than the millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996). Yes, the world’s first social networking site, “Six Degrees” was created in the year 1997. From that moment onwards, social media platforms have only grown with time and trends. Facebook was founded in the year 2004 by a group of Harvard Students. Later they purchased and merged several other social networking sites. Today Facebook has grown into a multinational conglomerate known as Meta. They own some of the most popular and widely used platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. along with Facebook.
The Magnitude of Social Media
Are you still hesitant about promoting your business on social networking sites? No matter what type of business you own, you will find your potential customers on these platforms. As of May 2024, around 5.07 billion people use social media. It amounts to 62.7 percent of the total world population. Facebook tops the list of the most popular social networking sites with over 3 billion active users. This is followed by YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp respectively with over 2 billion active users. When the lion’s share of the population is present on these platforms, we can arrive at a perception that there is no better place to market a product than social media platforms.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing
The first thing we consider while deciding on a marketing technique is, the benefits we can derive from it. Here is a list of the advantages you can achieve through using social media marketing to its full potential.
- Reach the targeted audience effectively
- Easily create a brand image and brand awareness
- Connect and build relationships with customers
- Increase traffic to the official website
- Learn from competitors
Effective Social Media Marketing
As the name suggests, SMM is the marketing and promotion of a business on social media. But, how can you make it effective to drive sales? It begins with understanding your target audience and the demographics of each platform you’re about to market your product in. Let’s take the age group as an example. Even though individuals from every age group are present on all platforms, there is always a group that dominates that particular platform. Recently, we can see that the boomers have taken over Facebook. Meanwhile, the younger generation is more engaged on Instagram. And you can find both groups equally active on WhatsApp. The first step of marketing is understanding your targetted audience. And what is a better way to do that other than social media?
Tactics of Social Media Marketing
Once you are familiar with your targeted audience and potential customers, it’s time for you to work on your tactics to boost engagement and generate sales. An average social media user has an attention span of 3 seconds. Hence, let’s have a look at those tactics and methods to attract, engage, and delight customers.
- Auditing: Start with auditing your existing account if you have any. Assess whether you were able to connect with your customers before having a marketing strategy.
- Content Calendar: Plan your social media posts with the help of a content calendar. It should contain what type of post should be posted on which platform at what time. The calendar should contain a plan for a month prepared 2 weeks prior.
- Quality Content: Content is the King. No matter how much you excel at all the other strategies, if you fail to create content that cannot grab the attention of your potential customers, everything else is useless. Carefully crafted content will take you a long way.
- Consistency: Closely follow the trends and be consistent with posting on every platform.
- Curated feed: Be mindful of every post you create. There should not be any unnecessary posts and should look appealing to a potential customer who is visiting your profile for the first time.
- Analytics: Keep track of the performance of your posts with the help of analytics. Try to understand what type of post and what type of content posted at what time has generated more engagement. Focus on creating more of them and analyze the things that were lacking in the posts that underperformed.
- Paid Ads: Social media ads are relatively on the affordable side considering other paid ads. Every user witnesses at least one ad every 5 minutes while doing mindless scrolling. All you need is attention-grabbing content in those ads.
- CTA button: Call-to-action is the most important factor in converting your engagement into leads. Provide the link to your website and other contact options on your bio and promotional posts.
- Customer Interaction: Simply making a post and vanishing into thin air until the next post won’t help you build a network with customers. You need to interact with your customers. Answer their queries, acknowledge their feedback, and build a customer-friendly image.
Conclusion
Social media has the power to humanize your business and make it more approachable and relatable. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you’re not just selling your product here, but building relationships with people and creating a community of your own with valuable customers. Crafting quality content while connecting with people will take your business to new heights.
Mastering these techniques will help you in creating an effective soial media marketing strategy. But if you need in-depth knowledge on this topic or any other digital marketing strategy, join Kerala’s First and Largest Agency-based Digital Marketing Academy, CDA. With the help of professionally qualified trainers, you will learn all the important aspects of Digital Marketing.
If you want to learn more about Social Media Marketing and other aspects of digital marketing, join our digital marketing program. CDA Academy stands out as the provider of India’s best online digital marketing program. To know more about digital marketing course in Kochi and Calicut, book a session with us.
Author Info
Ashitha Freelance Digital Marketing Expert in Calicut one of the digital marketing aspirants of CDA.
